Pollination is essential for many of the fruits and nuts in our diet, and for the production of seed for growing vegetables, salad crops, fiber crops, herbs, etc. as described in McGregor S E 1976, “Insect Pollination of Cultivated Crop Plants”, United States Department of Agriculture. The great majority of managed pollination is carried out using honeybees, while bumblebees are used under glass and in tunnels or hoop houses. However, there are advantages in using solitary bees, such as alfalfa leafcutter bees, as managed pollinators. Solitary bees suitable for this purpose, mostly species of Megachile and Osmia, are present in many parts of the world and thus represent a very substantial agricultural asset. Management of solitary bees as pollinators, however, requires significantly different techniques. For example, solitary bees spend a considerable portion of their life in a dormant phase known as diapause, either as mature adults or as larvae, prepupae or pupae.
It is of great importance that the active period of the bees coincides or overlaps with the bloom period in order to achieve optimal pollination and hence a heavy crop of good quality produce. In order to do this, the bees need to be stimulated to emerge from diapause. This is normally done by increasing the temperature in which the bees are held. By relating historical data on emergence of bees in response to heating with historical data on rate of development of flowers in the target crop, the period and temperature of incubation can be selected so that a desired proportion of the bees have emerged by start of bloom.
This process is straightforward to carry out in a laboratory or a commercial facility. Following incubation and emergence the bees may be transported to the field or orchard and released. However, there are biological advantages to carrying out the incubation in situ, so that newly emerged bees may immediately fly into the target crop. Field incubators powered by batteries, mains electricity, propane/butane/diesel or other fuel burners, and renewable energy sources are known in the industry. Unfortunately, the known field incubation equipment may be complex, heavy, expensive and easily damaged. The use of a biological source of heat energy, i.e. the heat produced by another organism (in this case a colony of honeybees) is unreported in the literature and unknown in the prior art. By this means the field incubation equipment can be made simple, lightweight, cheap and robust. In addition, the fact that a honeybee colony precisely regulates temperature and humidity in the brood nest means that the temperature within the claimed hivetop incubator is predictable and reliable.